User:KForeman/sandbox: Difference between revisions

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Mailer didn’t understand the corrida as well. Without Hemingway’s knowledge and concentration, he was more like El Loco, one tube hot and one tube not, concentrating on the emotion rather than the physical sequence from which it arose. Even so, he made the same important connection between torero and the writer that Hemingway had made. The tacit the realization that he was treading familiar ground must have been part of Mailer’s original inspiration, as he more or less admitted in the beginning, and he suggests now a subtle attendant epiphany with the phrase form is the record of a war. Once we consider this larger context of the piece and the carefully worded meaning of that embedded phrase, his literarily conceived doppelgänger Norman-Amado, Amado-Norman—with its improbable narcissistic pun—takes shape like El Loco’s equally improbable toreo in those rare moments when he could stand still and get it right.

Form is the record of a war: Mailer’s own version of grace under pressure, his own and El Loco’s. Form is the record of a war: His recognition of Amado as his curate, his twin, his artistic double. Form is the record of a war: This essay of Mailer’s is that record and the record of the summer of Amado, fused.

Form is the record of a war: On the 6th of February, 1955, Amado Ramírez, El Loco, took the alternative to become a full matador. He was unable to kill any of his three bulls and subsequently renounced the alternative and ended his career as a professional matador. Norman Mailer would not write “the novel about the bullfight.”

Since the identification of the writer and torero, as well as the larger context of war, came first from Hemingway, Mailer’s ultimate insight—his fleeting recognition of himself in the other, of the other in himself, and of both of them as one with Hemingway and his taurine shadow—was derivative in its source, yet original in its vision, adding another layer in its peculiar confirmation to Hemingway’s discovery of the literary value of toreo. Thanks to the clue Amado Ramírez had given him through his erratic performances (clue harks back to the ball of thread Theseus used to escape the labyrinth, after killing them in Otaur), Mailer’s eureka-like moment helps turn a messy essay in an unfortunate tome into an intricately conceived footnote to Death in the Afternoon.

===Works Cited===

@@ Line 96: / Line 96: @@
 Mailer didn’t understand the corrida as well. Without Hemingway’s knowledge and concentration, he was more like El Loco, one tube hot and one tube not, concentrating on the emotion rather than the physical sequence from which it arose. Even so, he made the same important connection between torero and the writer that Hemingway had made. The tacit the realization that he was treading familiar ground must have been part of Mailer’s original inspiration, as he more or less admitted in the beginning, and he suggests now a subtle attendant epiphany with the phrase form is the record of a war. Once we consider this larger context of the piece and the carefully worded meaning of that embedded phrase, his literarily conceived doppelgänger Norman-Amado, Amado-Norman—with its improbable narcissistic pun—takes shape like El Loco’s equally improbable toreo in those rare moments when he could stand still and get it right.
+Form is the record of a war: Mailer’s own version of grace under pressure, his own and El Loco’s. Form is the record of a war: His recognition of Amado as his curate, his twin, his artistic double. Form is the record of a war: This essay of Mailer’s is that record and the record of the summer of Amado, fused.
+Form is the record of a war: On the 6th of February, 1955, Amado Ramírez, El Loco, took the alternative to become a full matador. He was unable to kill any of his three bulls and subsequently renounced the alternative and ended his career as a professional matador. Norman Mailer would not write “the novel about the bullfight.”
+Since the identification of the writer and torero, as well as the larger context of war, came first from Hemingway, Mailer’s ultimate insight—his fleeting recognition of himself in the other, of the other in himself, and of both of them as one with Hemingway and his taurine shadow—was derivative in its source, yet original in its vision, adding another layer in its peculiar confirmation to Hemingway’s discovery of the literary value of toreo. Thanks to the clue Amado Ramírez had given him through his erratic performances (clue harks back to the ball of thread Theseus used to escape the labyrinth, after killing them in Otaur), Mailer’s eureka-like moment helps turn a messy essay in an unfortunate tome into an intricately conceived footnote to Death in the Afternoon.
 ===Works Cited===